High quality coffee food and beverage products enjoy considerable popularity and make up an increasingly significant proportion of the diets of many people. However, these high quality coffee products are both expensive to purchase and to produce. One such reason is the cost of the raw materials. Due to the nature of coffee production (e.g., growing cycle, season, location, and the like) it is difficult to offset an increased demand for consumer preferred coffees with additional levels of supply. This supply shortage results in higher production costs for high quality coffee food and beverage products that must eventually be borne by the consumer.
One approach to reducing cost has been the use of blends of high cost and low cost coffee varieties. Expensive coffees having consumer preferred taste characteristics are blended with less expensive, less taste preferred coffees varieties. However, this solution is not without shortcomings. Most notably, the inverse relationship that exists between the use of less preferred coffee varieties and the consumer's positive taste perception of the finished coffee product. As the proportion of “cheaper” coffees used increases, the consumer's positive flavor perception of the finished coffee product decreases.
Additionally, coffee products made from blends of high cost and low cost coffees frequently impose additional processing and production complexities, which in turn can also increase production and consumer purchase cost.
Examples of this approach can be found in European Patent Application No. 0282762, to Varsanyl et al.; European Patent Application No. 0861596A1, to Bradbury et al. Additional examples can be found in U.S. Pat. No. 5,993,877 to Ohtake et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,853,787 to Tamer et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,229,155 to Weisemann et al.; and U.S. Pat. No. 2,853,387 to Nutting.
Another approach has been to try and maximize the yield obtained from a given supply of high cost coffee by decreasing the frequency with which the high value, high cost coffees is discarded. Typically, this is accomplished by extending the time which a brewed or extracted coffee is held prior to either serving or disposing. However, as coffee hold-time increases a coffee's flavor is marked by a dramatic degradation in quality resulting from aging reactions. The longer the coffee is held, and the higher the temperature, the more pronounced the degradation. The flavor degradation is especially pronounced in liquid coffees such as brews and extracts. It is not uncommon for the flavor of coffee to become unstable (e.g., suffer from aging) prior to the point at which the expense of producing the coffee has been recovered.
Considerable effort, therefore, has been expended in an attempt to address the consumer acceptance limitations of using low cost coffees in the production of high quality coffee products, and the extended use of high quality coffees. There remains a need in the art for compositions and methods for flavoring coffee that ensures consistent, stable, high product quality, which are easily adaptable to a variety of less costly coffee materials, and are economical and easy to use. Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide compositions and methods which address these needs and provide further related advantages.